The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) has spoken and 89.5% said no. With that, the union is marching toward an October 6 walkout that will upend classrooms across Alberta. Parents are now bracing for cancelled lessons, scrambled child care, and the usual “contingency plans” that mean lost learning for kids.Why the hard no? It’s not because the offer was stingy. The tentative deal put a general wage increase of 12% over four years on the table, with most teachers seeing even larger boosts of up to 17% due to grid changes. It also included a promise to hire 3,000 new teachers and more than 1,500 educational assistants, and (as the finance minister noted) would have left Alberta teachers with the highest pay in Western Canada after taxes. That’s not austerity. That’s a dream deal. .OLDCORN: Truth and Reconciliation Day: A national farce masquerading as mourning.This wasn’t sprung on the union. Earlier this year, ATA’s own Central Table Bargaining Committee and Provincial Executive Council backed the mediator’s recommended settlement, which included the same 12% over four years, plus hundreds of millions for classroom supports, before members rejected it. If that’s not an endorsement from the union’s leadership class, what is?And timing? The union waited until families had packed lunches and tied shoes to pull the pin. Strike notice set the shutdown for October 6 after school had started, when disruption hurts most. Local boards have been pumping out alerts to parents because they know what’s coming. That’s not bargaining leverage, that’s holding families hostage. .Meanwhile, the claim that Alberta isn’t investing falls apart on contact. Budget 2025 sets K-12 operating at $9.9 billion, which is the highest ever, with funding to hire thousands of classroom staff. On top of that, there’s an $8.6 billion school-build program to create more than 200,000 new and modernized student spaces. That’s what governments do when they’re serious about kids and classrooms.Let’s talk about time, because time is what parents lose when strikes hit. Alberta requires 950 instructional hours in Grades 1–9 and 1,000 hours in high school — and those hours exclude PD days, conventions, interviews, and holidays. Many boards operate four-day weeks to meet those hour targets. Teachers already enjoy a massive amount of time off relative to most workers — summer, Christmas, spring break, plus non-instructional days — and they still have the leverage to close schools when it suits them..UPDATED: Alberta Teachers vote no to deal.The moral case here is simple. Government showed up with money, bodies, and bricks: raises now, bigger boosts for newer teachers, 3,000 new colleagues plus 1,500 EAs, record operating dollars, and a building plan to handle population growth. The union brass helped shape earlier terms, then watched members torpedo them — and now they’ve spiked a generous redo, timed to maximize pain. That’s not “for every student, every family.” It looks greedy. It reads like a power play. And it leaves parents and kids as collateral.Alberta families deserve stability — not brinkmanship. Take the deal, take the win, and get back to class..Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
